Guerrilla Warfare

by Walter Laqueur

  12. Schnee, Deutsch-Ostafrika, 29.

  13. Lettow-Vorbeck, Mein Leben, 85.

  14. Lettow-Vorbeck, Meine Erinnerungen, 17.

  15. R. Meinertzhagen, Army Diary (London, 1960), 96.

  16. Ibid., 205.

  17. Lettow-Vorbeck, Meine Erinnerungen, 17.

  18. Lettow-Vorbeck, Heia Safari, 132.

  19. Partisanskoe dvizhenie v Zapadnoi Sibiri, 22, quoted in A. M. Spirin, Klassi i partii υ grazhdanskoi voini υ Rossii (Moscow, 1968).

  20. G. Stewart, The White Armies of Russia (New York, 1933), 141.

  21. R. Luckett, The White Generals (London, 1971), 212.

  22. On partisan activities in the Civil War, Istoria grazhdanskoi voini (Moscow, igsg), IV. In addition there are monographs on local guerrilla activities in Omsk (Μ. V. Naumov, 1960), Irkutsk ( A. G. Solodyankin, 1960), and the Soviet Far East (S.S. Kaplin, 1960).

  23. W. H. Chamberlin, The Russian Revolution (New York, 1965), II, 215-217.

  24. M. Kubanin, Makhnovshchina (Leningrad, n.d.), passim; for an excellent appraisal of the Makhno movement in English see David Footman, Civil War in Russia (London, 1961), 245-305.

  25. Luckett, The White Generals, 278.

  26. Chamberlin, The Russian Revolution, 236.

  27. Chamberlin, The Russian Revolution, 437-440. The story of the Antonov movement has been told in a novel by Nikolai Virta (Odinochestvo) and a collection of essays (Antonovshchina) by S. Evgenov and O. Litovski.

  28. F. Novitski quoted in R. Pipes, The Formation of the Soviet Union (Cambridge, Mass., 1964), 179. See also J. Castagné, Les Basmatchis (Paris, 1925), and S. Ginsburg, "Basmachestvo ν Fergane/'Nocy Vostok (1925), 10-11.

  29. Malaya Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya (Moscow, 1958), 1,825.

  30. "Borba s kontrrevoliutsionnim vosstaniam," Voina i revoliutsiya, 7-9 (1926).

  31. Ibid., 9 (ig26). For another interesting Soviet treatment of counterinsurgency see S. Dubrovski, "Grigorovshchina," Voina i revoliutsiya, 4 and 5 (1928).

  32. Hagen Schulze, Freikorps und Republik 1918-1920 (Boppard, 1969), 39. The main studies on the Freikorps are Ε. von Schmidt-Pauli, Geschichte der Freikorps (Stuttgart, 1936); F. W. von Oertzen, Die deutschen Freikorps (Munich, ig38); and R. G. L. Waite, Vanguard of Nazism (Cambridge, Mass., 1952).

  33· Von Oertzen, Die deutschen Freikorps, 21; Schulze, Freikorps und Republik, 41. There is a very detailed description of military operations in Darstellungen aus den Nachkriegskämpfen deutscher Truppen und Freikorps, edited by the Forschungsanstalt für Kriegs- und Heeresgeschichte (Berlin, 1936-1940), 8 vols. It has however little to say about the spirit of the Freikorps.

  34. Ernst Sontag, Korfanty (Kitzingen, 1954); S. Sopicki, Wojciech Korfanty (Katowice, 1935).

  35. H. von Riekhoff, German-Polish Relations 1918-33 (Baltimore, 1971), 47.

  36. Schulze, Freikorps und Republik, 44.

  37. F. Sieburg, Es werde Deutschland (Frankfort, 1933), 20.

  38. On the Freikorps spirit see Schulze, Freikorps und Republik, 54-66; E. von Salomon, Die Geächteten (Berlin, 1930), and his Freikorpskämpfer (Berlin, 1938); Arnolt Bronnen, Rossbach (Berlin, 1930). For the resentment against sections of the old conservative officers corps see Heimsoth, Freikorps greift an (Berlin, 1930), 80-81.

  39. Encyclopaedia Britannica (1957), X, 950.

  40. Lenin, Selected Works (New York, 1967), I, 581; the article first appeared in Proletary (29 August 1906).

  41. Lenin, Collected Works (New York, 1962), XI, 213; the article was first published in Proletary (30 September 1906).

  42. Ibid.

  43. Ibid.

  44. Lenin, Werke, XI, 159.

  45. Lenin, Collected Works, XXII, 311.

  46. See for instance V. I. Lenin ο voine, armii i voennoi nauke (Moscow, 1965).

  47. John Erickson, "Lenin as Civil War Leader," in Lenin, the Man, the Theorist, the Leader, L. Schapiro and P. Reddaway, eds. (London, 1967), 174.

  48. Lenin, Werke, XXIX, 545. See also Werke, 247,281, 514.

  49. Lenin, Ausgewählte Werke, 2 vols. (Moscow, 1946-1947), II, 595.

  50. Recent anthologies on Leninism and guerrilla warfare usually cover ground that has only tenuous guerrilla connection; one would look in vain in them for what Lenin really said and wrote about partisanshchina. See for instance W. J. Pomeroy, ed., Guerrilla Warfare and Marxism (New York, 1968).

  51. Military Writings by Leon Trotsky (New York, 1971), 25, 54. Trotsky's denunciations of guerrillaism caused some headaches to his latter-day disciples, who argued that he was merely opposed to post-revolutionary guerrilla war, not to guerrilla war per se. Before 1917 he had been neither for nor against it; the question was then scarcely of consequence to him. Like Lenin, he had found nothing wrong with the Latvian insurrection of 1905, but he could not envisage guerrilla war playing an important role in revolutionary strategy in the industrially developed countries. He was not concerned with the rest of die world because he did not expect socialist revolutions in the colonies.

  52. From a speech in April 1922, quoted in Military Writings by Leon Trotsky, 81.

  53. Quoted in E. Wollenberg, The Red Army (London, 1938), 38.

  54. Joseph Stalin, Marxism and the National and Colonial Question (London, n.d.), 154. Much importance is attached to this quotation by C. A. Dixon and O. Heilbrunn in Communist Guerrilla Warfare (London, 1954), 24.

  55. Alexander Orlov, Handbook of Intelligence and Guerrilla Warfare (Ann Arbor, 1963), passim.

  56. A. Neuberg, Armed Insurrection (London, 1970); the original German edition, Der Bewaffnete Aufstand, appeared in 1928. "A. Neuberg" was a collective pseudonym for O. Piatnitsky and other Soviet and foreign Communist leaders including Marshal Tukhachevski and Togliatti.

  57. Neuberg, Armed Insurrection, 259.

  58. For instance, A. Kolan, "Partisanskaya voina ν okkupirovannikh rayonnakh Kitaya," Kommunisticheskii Internatsional, 6 (1940), 60 et seq.

  59-James Connolly, "Street Fighting—Summary," published first in Workers Republic (24 July 1915). Quoted from Connolly's Selected Writings (London, 1973), 230.

  60. Major Henri le Carron, Twenty-five years in the Secret Service (London, 1892).

  61. John Devoy, Recollections of an Irish Rebel (New York, 1929), 65.

  62. Among the recent accounts of the Easter Rising are Desmond Ryan, The Rising (Dublin, 1957); James Gleeson, Bloody Sunday (London, 1962); Max Caulfield, The Easter Rebellion (London, 1964).

  63. Tom Barry, Guerrilla Days in Ireland (Dublin, 1949), 7-11.

  64. On Collins, see Piaras Beaslai, Michael Collins and the Making of a New Ireland (London, 1926), and Margery Forester, Michael Collins. The Lost Leader (London, 1971).

  65. Barry, Guerrilla Days, 26.

  66. T. P. Coogan, The IRA (London, 1970), 47.

  67. Ibid., 274.

  68. J. Swire, Bulgarian Conspiracy (London, 1939), 103. See also J. Perrigault, Bandits d'Orient (Paris, 1931); Stoyan Christowe, Heroes and Assassins (London, 1935); A. Doolard, Quatre mois chez les comitadjis (Paris, 1932).

  69. F. Tudman, Rat protiv rat (Zagreb, 1957), 109

  70. L. Zarine quoted in Albert Londres, Terror in the Balkans (London, 1935), 171.

  71. David S. Woolman, Rebels in the Rif (London, 1959), 80; Augusto Vivero, El derrumbamiento (Madrid, 1922), 161; and for a general account of the war, Carlos Hernandez de Huerrera and Tomas Garcia Figueras, Accion de Espafia en Marruecos (Madrid, 1929), I.

  72. Stanley G. Payne, Politics and the Military in Modern Spain (Stanford, 1967), l68.

  73. Woolman, Rebels in the Rif, 155.

  74. Major General C. W. Gwynn, Imperial Policing (London, 1936), 300.

  75. There is no satisfactory detailed account of the rebellion of 1936-1939. John Marlowe, Rebellion in Palestine (London, 1946) is a brief and reliable survey; Sefer Toldot Hahagana (Jerusalem, 1964), II, pt. 2, is a survey with the emphasis on Jewish defense rather than Arab attack.

  76. Marlowe, Rebellion in Palestine, 158.

&n
bsp; 77. Sefer Toldot Hahagana, 766.

  78. Marlowe, Rebellion in Palestine, 190.

  79. Sefer Toldot Hahagana, 765.

  80. On the "Plan of Ayala," John Womack, Zapata and the Mexican Revolution (London, 1972), 175 et seqon Pancho Villa, Guzman, Pancho Villa, and Celia Herera, Francisco Villa (Mexico, 1964). For the general background, Robert E. Quirk, The Mexican Revolution 1914/5 (Bloomington, 1960); Alfonso Taracena, La tragedia Zapatista (Mexico, 1931), and Venustiano Carranza (Mexico, 1963); F. Tannenbaum, Peace by Revolution (New York, 1933); Jose T. Melendez, ed., Historia de la revolución Mexicana (Mexico, 1936), 2 vols.

  81. On the military aspects of the Zapatista operations see Juan Barragan Rodriguez, Historia del ejército y de la revolución constitucionalista (Mexico, 1946), and Jesus Silva Herzog, Breve historia de la revolucion Mexicana (Mexico, 1960), 2 vols.

  82. On Prestes's attitude to guerrillaism see R. II. Chilcote, The Brazilian Communist Party (New York, 1974), 88-89.

  83. For an excellent summary of the Prestes campaign see F. R. Allemann, Macht und Ohnmacht der Guerilla (Munich, 1974), 25-45; more detailed descriptions are Helio Silva, 1926; A grande marcha (Rio de Janeiro, 1971); N. Werneck Sodre, Historia militar do Brasil (Rio de Janeiro, 1967); and L. M, Lima, A Coluna Prestes: marchas e cornbates (São Paulo, 1945).

  84. The only detailed account is Neil Macauley, The Sandino Affair (Chicago, 1967); on his anti-Americanism, ibid., 207. For a military assessment R. W. Peard, "The Tactics of Bush Warfare," Infantry Journal (September-October 1931)·

  85. Ε. Lister, "Lessons from the Spanish Guerrilla War 1939-51," World Marxist Review (February 1965). Guillen's criticism appears in his Historia de la revolución española (Buenos Aires, 1962).

  86. Barton Whaley, Guerrillas in the Spanish Civil War (Detroit, 1969), 30. For the general background Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War (London, 1961), and Pierre Broué and Émile Témime, La révolution et la guerre d'Espagne (Paris, 1961).

  87. Whaley, Guerrillas, 67 et seq.

  88. Payne, Politics and the Military, 391.

  89. Ehrhardt, Kleinkrieg, 3rd ed. (Berlin, 1944), III; the first edition appeared in 1935·

  90. Ibid., 102.

  91. Lieutenant Colonel C. E. Vickery, "Small Wars," Army Quarterly (July 1923), 307·

  92. Army Quarterly (January 1927), 349. The same point was made at the time by an American officer; "We must never overlook the fact that behind and over us is that force known as Public Opinion in the United States. ... In small wars we are at peace no matter how thickly the bullets are flying." Major Η. H. Utley, "An Introduction to the Tactics and Technique of Small Wars," Marine Corps Gazette (May 1931), 51. 93· Ibid., 353·

  94. Κ. F. Nowak, ed., Die Aufzeichnungen des Generalmajors Max Hoffmann (Berlin, 1928), II, 328,373-377·

  Chapter Five: the Twentieth Century (II): Partisans Against Hitler

  1. Orlovskaya ohlast υ godi velikoi otechestvennoi voini (Orel, 1960), quoted in John A. Armstrong, ed., Soviet Partisans in World War II (Madison, 1964), 37. A recent Soviet source gives the total number of partisans active in the Orel region as 16,300. V. N. Andrianov, Voina ν tylu vraga (Moscow, 1974), I,113.

  2. European Resistance Movements 1939-1945 (Oxford, 1960), 376.

  3. The use of the term partisan was banned by Himmler in August 1942 "for psychological reasons."

  4. Horst Rohde, Das deutsche Wehrmachttransportwesen im zweiten Weltkrieg (Stuttgart, 1971), 331.

  5. J. Marianovitch and Pero Morache, Nash oslobodilchki rat i narodna revolucia 1941-45 (Belgrade, 1958), 311; Walter Hubatsch, ed., Kriegstagebuch des Oberkommandos der Wehrmacht (Frankfurt, 1963), III, pt. 2,1618.

  6. Tito, Vojna dela (Belgrade, 11 .iL), I,128.

  7. According to V. Strugar the partisans diverted up to 55 enemy divisions (V. Strugar, Der jugoslawische Volksbefreiungskrieg 1941 bis 1945 [East Berlin, n.d.], 300); according to German dates, the total strength of Axis forces dispatched in 1942 against Tito and Mikhailovich was one German division, nine battalions of the Landwehr, seven Italian divisions and some 44,000 Croat soldiers — altogether about 120,000 men (Kriegstagebuch, II, pt. 1, 138). This figure is identical with Tito's own estimate for 1943: 120,000 Axis soldiers faced 20,000 of his own men.

  8. The high incidence of party officials in the partisan command is noted in the official Soviet history of the war, Geschichte des grossen Vaterländischen Krieges der Sowjet Union (East Berlin, 1963), II, 148; according to this source up to fifty percent of the members of the major partisan units were party members; according to other sources it was only fifteen to thirty percent. The higher figure probably refers to the early stage of the partisan movement, the lower to August 1943.

  9. L. Ν. Bichkov, Partisanskoe Dvizhenie (Moscow, 1965), 419.

  10. According to Soviet sources the number of Soviet partisans was 90,000 by the end of 1941; their number fell sharply with the beginning of winter, but rose again in April-May 1942. See Andrianov, Voina ti tylu vraga.

  11. Erich Hesse, Der sowjetrussische Partisanenkrieg 1941-1944 (Göttingen, 1969), 134.

  12. Ibid., 206. Hitler wrote in a circular letter in October 1942 that successes were achieved "only where the struggle against banditry has been carried out with utter disregard and brutality." Hubatsch, Kriegstagebuch, 237.

  13. Gerald L. Weinberg in Armstrong's Soviet Partisans, 513; Hesse, Partisanenkrieg, 227.

  14. Hesse,Partisanenkrieg, 229.

  15. But even the largest Soviet partisan units were smaller than the guerrilla armies of the civil war. Mamontov's (counterrevolutionary) partisan army in the Altai had a strength of 30,000. There was, of course, not that much difference in equipment at the time between "regulars" and "partisans."

  16. Andrianov, "Reidi partisan," in Voenno — Istoricheski Zhurnal 3 (1973).

  17. Hesse, Partisanenkrieg, 248.

  18. Vsenarodnoe Partisanskie dvizhenie υ Byelorussia (Minsk, 1967), 1,146.

  19. Among the best-known and most interesting accounts of partisan life are the following: A. Fyodorov, Podpolnyi ohkom deistvuyet (Moscow, ig47); P. Ignatov, Zapiski partisana (Moscow, 1944); S. Kovpak, Ot Putivlya do Karpat (Moscow, 1945); G. Linkov, Voina ν tylu vraga (Moscow, 1951); D. N. Medvedev, Silnye dukhom (Moscow, 1951); P. Vershigora, Lyudi s chistoi sovestyu (Moscow, igsi); and the collective volume Sovetskye Partisany (Moscow, 1960). Some of these books were translated into foreign languages; Medvedev's account was reissued in 1975 in an edition of 150,000.

  20. Weinberg in Armstrong's Soviet Partisans, 361-388.

  21. The Bryansk partisans had a tank battalion (Andrianov, Voina υ tylu vraga, 110).

  22.1. Vinogradov, Doroga cherez front (Leningrad, 1964), 7.

  23. E. Klink, Das Gesetz des Handelns: die Operation Zitadelle 1943 (Stuttgart, 1966), 130.

  24. Bradley F. Smith and A. F. Peterson, Heinrich Himmler: Geheimreden 1933 bis 1945 (Berlin, 1974), 163.

  25. Hesse, Partisanenkrieg, 247.

  26. Armstrong, quoted in Soviet Partisans, 38.

  27. Ibid., 39. Kenneth Macksey has noted the inability of the partisans to hamper the Germans when they were winning. "Subtract what few partisans there were in operation before Stalingrad and little difference would have been made to the outcome. The Germans would have penetrated as fast and as far as they did regardless of the partisans." K. Macksey, The Partisans of Europe in the Second World War (New York, 1975), 255.

  28. For a general survey of the state of Soviet partisan studies, Yu. P. Petrov, "Sostoianie i zadachi razrabotki istorii partisanskoi dvizheniya," Voprosy Istorii (1971), 5,30 et seq.

  29. F. W. Deakin, The Embattled Mountain (London, 1971), 100.

  30. Smith and Peterson, Himmler Geheimreden, 242.

  31. Ζbornik dokumentata i podataka ο Narodnooslobiladskom ratu jugoslavenskih naroda (Belgrade, 1950-1960), consists of 130 volumes. It is subdivided into several series; part 2 includes the documents of the general staff, the others contain the documents on a geographical basis, e
.g., pt. I, Serbia, pt. 3, Montenegro, etc. There is a full bibliography, prepared by B. Dajovic and M. Radevic (Belgrade, 1969). See also Strugar, "Apergu bibliographique," Revue d'histoire de la deuxieme guerre mondiale (July 1972), 53-62.

  32. Zbornik, section 6, III, 142; most of the "excesses" in Montenegro took place in July 1941.

  33· Ph. Auty, Tito (London, 1970), 177; V. Dedijer, Tito speaks (London, 1953), is the semiofficial biography.

  34. Zbornik, series 2, V, 187.

  35. Tito, Vojna Dela, I,129.

  36. Hubatsch, Kriegstagebuch, pt. 1,139.

  37. Ibid., III, part 2,1253.

  38. The Yugoslav Communists had themselves been in touch with the Germans. In March 1943 Velebit and Djilas, two of their highest-ranking commanders, traveled to Zagreb and, according to German documents discovered after the war, promised they would stop fighting the Germans if these would leave them alone in their bases in the Sanjak. "The partisan saw no reason for fighting our army — they added that they fought against German troops only in self-defence — but wished solely to fight the Chetniks." (Quoted in W. Roberts, Tito, Mihailovic and the Allies [Rutgers University Press, 1973], 108.) Kasche, the German minister in Zagreb, in his dispatches to Rerlin advocated a German accommodation with Tito's partisans; militarily it would be useful if the partisans were given a free hand against the Chetniks. These negotiations were cut short by Hitler who said, "One does not negotiate with rebels, rebels must be shot."

  39. Auty, Tito, 208.

  40. There are no comprehensive statistics; seventy-five percent of the soldiers of one Slovene division were peasants; in other parts of Yugoslavia the peasants' share was perhaps even larger (K. Dineic, "La guerre de liberation nationale en Yougoslavie," Revue d'histoire de la deuxieme guerre mondiale [April 1960], 41).

  41. W. Venohr, Aufstand für die Tschechoslowakei (Hamburg, 1969), 154.

  42. V. Prevan, Slovenske ndrodne povstanie (Bratislava, 1965). See also Gustav Husák, Svedectvo ο slovenskom národnom povstaní (Prague, 1954).

  43. T, Bor Komorowski, The Secret Army (London, 1951), and S. Korbonski, Fighting Warsaw (London, 1956), are the main accounts as seen from the Home Army. J. Kirchmayer, Powstanie warszawskie (Warsaw, 1959), gives the Communist version; H. v. Krannhals, Der Warschauer Aufstand 1944 (Frankfurt, 1962), is the most detailed German monograph.